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Healing: To Begin, One Must Begin

Writing can be a very powerful tool. A healing, cathartic tool. For me, writing certainly is that, and more. It is an important part of both my life and my practice. My yoga practice, I mean. In fact, these days, it has BECOME my practice.

When I write, I stand behind what I write because when I write, I write from a place of truth. This “truth,” however, doesn’t make any of what I write either right or wrong. It certainly doesn’t make me anymore right, or anymore wrong, than any of you, if any of you are even reading this. When I say it is the truth, I mean it is the truth, as I see it, for me at any given time.

So, as I write this blog, I write from a place of truth about where I am, in my practice and otherwise. And I do this with the intent of not only sharing but of growing. This intention will be the common thread in all of my posts. At times, this intention will be quite obvious and, at other times, not so obvious. But the intention will be there. The intention of growing. To grow. Growth. I fully expect that this blog will change. What I wrote yesterday may not be fully reflective of where I am today. And what I write next week… well, who knows?

In terms of practice, in order to move forward, we need to recognize where we are. If you have read my recent post on what I perceive to be the “problem” with yoga as it is today, you have a pretty good idea of where I am. I put it out there. And I stand behind what I wrote, so please don’t take THIS post as an apologia. I post what I post with the full intention of growing. My intent is not to blame yoga, or anyone practicing yoga, for anything. My point was, and still is, that WE are responsible, wholly responsible, for whatever it is that is going on in our practice today and, surely, in our whole lives. I didn’t write that post to say “This is where I am, this is the way it is, this is where I’ll be. There’s no work to be done here! Have a good day.” That post, beyond anything else, is my starting point, a place from which to excavate and a place from which to grow. It was also a huge, uplifting, and wonderful release for me! In that post, I let go of many thoughts and emotions that had been sitting with me for a long, long time. Too long. Thoughts that needed to be articulated for both the practitioner and the writer within me. Releasing them has been a great thing. No, I didn’t have to do this in such a public forum. So, why did I? Well, partly because I wanted to share those feelings with you. Many of you practice yoga and even more of you teach it, and part of me wanted to open up to you in hopes of starting a conversation. Because for me this blog is not only about me releasing, it is also about you responding, should you choose to. And some of you have. I appreciate both the publicly posted comments and the private messages that I have received. The other part of putting all of this out there publicly is the purely artistic one. It is rewarding to create something for the purpose of releasing it out into the world. It takes the same commitment to write, and write well, if I can be so presumptuous, as it does to paint, skillfully, on a canvas; to play, masterfully, an instrument; to dance, seamlessly, across a stage. It involves craft. And bravery. And, yes, also ego. I’m well aware of that, too.

Most importantly, for me, though, this blog is about finding a way back to practice. My practice. To do that, I have to start where I am, and I think I have done that, honestly. And if I’m not honest with me about where I am, then I can’t be honest with any of you, either. Nor can I be honest about my practice. I started where I did in part because I want to see where it takes me. Where will I be a month from now, 6 months, a year, 10 years…

So, my purpose in writing this post has been to clearly explain why I am here, blogging, at all. Both to you and, probably more so, to me. As I mentioned in my “Hello World” post, I expect this blog to be a whole bunch of things and to carry with it a myriad of feelings and emotions. But, most importantly, I want to be honest. Not “right,” just honest. Hopefully, I have been.